HR 5013, Implementing Management for Performance and Related Reforms to Obtain Value in Every Acquisition Act of 2010, or IMPROVE Act of 2010, is a 97-page bill that attempts to improve the defense acquisition (aka spending) system.  The bill also would require new standards and techniques for training and rewarding that workforce.  While the intent of the bill – to save money and crackdown on bureaucratic waste – is a laudable goal, I object to its level of spending, how the money is being spent, its overall tone and assumption that the two (2) wars we are currently fighting are permanent “defense” bases and institutions abroad.

This bill passed the House by a vote of 417-3.  The incumbent representative, Congressman Charlie Dent, voted FOR this measure, reasons unknown.  The Democrat challenger, John Callahan, has not stated an opinion on this bill to my knowledge.

I would have voted AGAINST this measure for the reasons described below.

Warfare, by its very nature, is an unpredictable, vastly expensive affair.  This alone is a great reason to not jump headlong into additional undeclared, unconstitutional, unjust wars like Iraq and Afghanistan.  As I outlined in “Guns or Health Care?” America spends more on its military than the rest of the world combined, so to be frugal all of a sudden without simply mandating actual budget cuts is more than a touch insensible.  Note the below chart is not all military spending, since military expenditures comes from the budgets of many other departments as well.

I am not convinced that the detailed rules and regulations will have its intended effect.  Per the Congressional Budget Office’s cost estimate consider: (photo)

• The bill will cost $250 million dollars to implement and no where in the bill outlines where or even HOW MUCH the additional bureaucracy of the bill will save.

• $28 million is to increase bonuses for civilian Department of Defense employees.  However, the average salary of federal workers at $71,000 are ALREADY far in advance of the private sector, which has an average salary of just $41,000.  (Source)

• $14 million will be use by the Department of Defense to subsidize scholarships of more than 500 students.  This is just more of the government granting special privileges to special groups.  Besides this, the best-suited personnel to reform wasteful defense spending are professional procurement specialists currently working in private industry in my opinion.

• Besides employing students fresh out of school, the act plans to hire 55 more personnel to carry out the training and regulation of the rest of the vast – truly vast – Department of Defense’s workforce.  I am highly skeptical of the additional bureaucrats making a difference, though certainly efforts with the current group of employees could certainly optimize contract spending.

Instead, a good start would simply be to encourage the military to not use up their entire budgets, as so often is done to assure that spending will not be cut in the following year.  We must keep in mind that the government already employs 22.5 million people, NOT including government or military contractors, and is the second-largest job sector in the economy after transportation and utility jobs.

A mandated, across-the-board 10% cut in military expenditures would probably achieve the overall objective of Congress in a far more effective manner.  However, let’s face it:  Congress is merely concerned with appearing to work on the problem, not actual substance.

May 3, 2010

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